Aiding ISIS victims without helping the jihadists is a difficult task

The rise of the Islamic State
is a moral dilemma for humanitarian aid groups.

The conflict in Iraq and
Syria has inflicted incredible suffering on at least some of
the 3.6 million people reportedly living under ISIS's rule. And
ISIS is one of that conflict's most brutal combatants.

Aid could strengthen ISIS's
state-building project by defraying the costs of public
services and allowing ISIS to distribute aid in a way that
advances the group's propoganda. Aiding the people chafing under
"the caliphate" may actually buffer one of the war's worst
actors, thus solidifying the conflict's underlying
dynamics.

There isn't an easy way around this problem, which is
present in just about every conflict zone. Most aid groups work
through it by adhering as strictly as possible to a principal
of "humanitarian neutrality" that prohibits them from endorsing
or advancing the objectives of any side in a conflict.

But some analysts wonder if neutrality is even possible.
"Though providers of humanitarian aid would like to operate in
a 'neutral space,' there is no such location in the contested
battlegrounds of an insurgency," Nadia
Schadlow wrote in the context of the US's ongoing mission
in Afghanistan in March of 2011. "Neutrality not only requires turning a
blind eye to hostile organizations, but also risks enriching
and strengthening bad actors physically and
psychologically."

That doesn't mean that humanitarian groups should shrink
in the face of moral hazard. After all, halting aid arguably
penalizes individuals for factors far beyond their control —
namely, the nature of the government or armed group they're
living under. And certain aid interventions, like vaccinations
against infectious diseases, could pay serious dividends long
after the conflict concludes.

There is a point at which the moral hazard of aiding a
bad actor might actually be worth it, even if there's no set
equation for locating it. The cost of
halting American remittances to Somalia, for instance —
something that's effectively happening as a result of US
counter-terror policy — is arguably greater than the risk
that of some of the remitted money falling into the hands of
terrorist groups.

So neutrality could lead aid groups to operate in ways
that are actually exact opposite of neutral. "The very
fact that an aid organization can travel safely in a contested
province often means that insurgents have calculated that it is
in their interest to allow the organization safe passage,"
writes Schadlow. "The fact that an NGO-built school
remains standing — while an [International Security Assistance
Force] school is destroyed — is likewise because insurgents
have made a political calculation.:

But the easiest way to avoid this problem is to simply
halt all aid within a certain area, a position that's
problematic on its own.

Displaced people from
the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to
the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian
border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian
border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah
GovernorateRodi
Said/Reuters

Jim Hake, a California-based
venture capitalist and entrepreneur, believes he's found one
possible solution to this problem. Shortly after the September
11th attacks, Hake foundedSpirit of
America, an aid
organization that eschews humanitarian neutrality and works
explicitly towards advancing US national security and
diplomatic objectives.

So in the Republic of
Georgia, the organization donates supplies to an initiative
that helps soldiers injured fighting for the US-led coalition
in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Syria, the group uses local
partners to distribute solar-power radios that can be used to
pick up stations critical of the ruling Assad regime, a project
profiled in the
New York Times.

As Hake explained to Business
Insider, Spirit of America "builds all of our efforts on
top of what either US military or civilian personnel are doing
and trying to accomplish, and their assessment and analysis of
what will be helpful and what will be harmful." Right now,
it'sactive
in countriesas diverse
as Columbia, Vietnam and Kenya.

In Hake's view, security and
humanitarian objectives can't be pursued separately. In the
absence of security, humanitarian aid can end up benefiting the
strongest actor in a given area, rather than the most virtuous
or constructive one. And in the absence of humanitarian aid,
security can be fragile or even totally facile.

Spirit of America provides aid that helps advance
security-minded US policy. So in Iraqi Kurdistan, the group is providing
winter boots for child refugees from ISIS's "Caliphate." It's
also exploring the possibility of launching other refugee
assistance programs in Lebanon and Jordan, with the partial aim
of countering "ISIS infiltration and influence."

Hake believes these efforts
fulfill both security and aid aims. "You start to stabilize and build security
where ISIS doesn't have control and then start to move into
where they do," Hake told Business Insider. "It's an ink-blot
approach where you build the security and relationships and
influence where you can and build out from there."

Spirit of America's solution isn't applicable everywhere. The
US is a significant force all around the world, as Spirit of
America's far-flung range of projects demonstrates. But there
are still places that US policy doesn't touch as directly. And
while the organization works around ISIS-controlled areas, it
doesn't work inside of them. Their solution is to improve
conditions in areas ISIS doesn't control, and then help
stabilize places liberated from the jihadists.

Still, in moving beyond the neutrality principle, Spirit of
America presents a compelling alternative to the existing
framework, which arguably sidesteps the moral hazard issue and
may inadvertently make conflicts worse.

Hake describes his approach as "directly responsive
to what [US] military and civilian teams are trying to
accomplish." That isn't always an option in responding to
morally tricky humanitarian crises. But it's one way of
avoiding a perverse situation in which conflicts are worsened
as the result of good-faith attempts to alleviate people's
suffering.